Mix:
2 cups baking soda
1/2 cup liquid castile soap
4 tablespoons vegetable glycerin (acts as a preservative)
optional – 5-10 drops essential oil of your choice. Another alternative would be to just use scented castile soap, like Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap!
Store in a sealed glass jar. Shelf life of up to two years!
Posted in 
Mix equal parts walnut oil and lemon juice
Add a few drops of eucalyptus oil or other fragrant herb essential oil of your choice for fragrance (optional)
Rub generously into wood
Let stand for a few minutes and then buff with a soft dry cloth to a beautiful finish!
| It’s that time of the year again – mosquito season is upon us! Here are some tips to repel the nasty little critters that tend to invade our homes this time of year; naturally, of course!
Ants: Apparently more than just small children are repelled by vegetables. Ants are said to hate… cucumber of all things! Leave some cucumber slices or peelings around the point of entry; bitter cucumber works best.
Ants are said to never cross a chalk line. Other lines they reportedly will avoid: Already have fleas in the house? Trap them! Take a shallow baking pan and fill it with a few inches of water. Add a little squirt of soap. Position a lamp directly over the pan to attract the fleas. The light will attract them in, and the soap will prevent them from jumping back out. (This also works for moths.) Mosquitos: We all know that the best way to keep mosquitos off our property is to remove all standing water. But what to do if there is standing water that is too difficult to remove? Add 1 tsp of dish soap per gallon of standing water to destroy the larvae.Another easy way to repel mosquitos (and pretty up the yard!) is to plant marigolds. The little bloodsuckers can’t stand the smell. Got vaporub? Mosquitos are naturally repelled by the eucalyptus scent. DIY Bug Spray: Add 2 1/2 teaspoons of any combination of the following essential oils to 1 cup of vodka: Basically, try to smell like a tree! |
You may (or may not!) remember me posting some time ago about Green Irene, a wonderful new company providing Green Home Makeovers through highly trained Green Irene Eco-Consultants. Their Green Home Makeovers run around $99, and cover topics such as energy-efficient lighting, energy conservation, toxic-free living, water purity and conservation, indoor air quality, waste reduction and recycling, and emergency safety and preparedness. While of course it is perfectly possible to learn all this stuff on your own, a Green Home Makeover can save you tons of time in research and trial and error, which I think makes it a great resource for busy families.
For awhile I considered becoming a Green Irene consultant myself, just because it fits in perfectly with my passion for helping people remove the toxins from their daily life and go green! In the end, I decided I am already wearing too many hats and didn’t sign up for the training.
I was quite excited to recently find out Lara Williams with The Green Team Real Estate has officially joined up with Green Irene and become a certified Eco-Consultant!
If you are serious about going green, Lara is going to be an invaluable resource. Visit her website here to book a Green Home Makeover, or check out her blog here. If anyone has already had a Green Home Makeover, I’d love to hear all about it in the comments!
Green Drinks is a monthly meet-up here in Fort Collins where green-minded folks come together to network and socialize.
Green Drinks is an international organization started in 2001, with similar meet-ups happening all over the world. In Fort Collins GD is organized by Lara Williams with Green Team Real Estate, and meets on the 4th Wednesday of each month at various locations around Fort Collins. Green Drinks is typically PACKED, and a whole lot of fun! If you’ve never attended, you should stop by and say hello!
The June 2009 Green Drinks is scheduled for Wednesday the 24th from 6-8 pm at TST Inc., 748 Whaler’s Way in Fort Collins. Join us on the patio for socializing and networking with fellow green-minded locals, complimentary beer generously provided by Odell Brewing Co. and American Eagle Distributing, and a selection of light food offerings provided by TST.
Tour TST’s groundbreaking office environment (complete with slide) and learn about their dedication to four levels of sustainability and innovative community design. Alpine Gardens will also be there showcasing native plants and landscaping options out on TST’s lakeside patio.
RSVP to Lara Williams at lara@greenteamre.com. I hope to see you there!
Fill a 32 oz spray bottle with warm water
Add 2 tablespoons of natural dish soap – I like Seventh Generation, Bi-O-Kleen, and Ecover. Don’t use conventional – it will be too soapy!
Add 20 drops of Grapefruit Seed Extract to disinfect (find it in the supplements section of your local health food store.)
Optional – add 5-10 drops of essential oil of your choice for fragrance. Lemon or Jasmine are my top picks!
Shake gently, and enjoy your new scent of clean!
As most people who are familiar with my company know, we have always made the majority of the products we use in our client’s homes ourselves. As of this week, that will no longer be the case.
I am excited to introduce Queen of the Meadow, our new product line. Queen of the Meadow is a small local company run by Daniela Butrick and her family, and they have mixed up a heavenly custom-blended signature scent just for All Star! Here is some information about Daniela’s company from her website (www.queenofthemeadow.com):
…your exclusive source of pure and natural beauty care!
We are a family business, located in Fort Collins, CO, that creates all natural, herbal hair & body care, and household products.
Our ingredients are wild gathered, or organically grown and we appreciate the renewable resources our earth is giving us.
Our products do not contain any petrochemicals like aggressive detergents or petroleum based preservatives that could harm you and our environment and do not belong at all in your hair or on your skin.
We are crafters and our products are handmade, in small batches – and get to you always fresh!
Nor do we put synthetic fragrances, colors, emulsifiers, thickeners or alcohols in our products.
The oils we add, are when ever possible cold pressed, unrefined, and organic. We only use raw butters – simply, we create our recipes with only ingredients that are kept in their most natural, authentic way, so nothing harmful gets into your bloodstream!
We care about human beings, animals, plants…just simply about our environment and planet we are living on.
Our wonderful products are filled in recycled glass jars, recycled paper bags, and recyclable plastic bottles, we offer
refill – instead of landfill!
In the office, we only use recycled papers.
For mail orders, we reuse boxes and newspaper.
You can feel and enjoy our products’ natural origin!
In addition to her cleaning products, I have personally used Daniela’s solid lotion bar for a couple of years now, and love it. Look for her in local farmer’s markets and check out the goodies for yourself!
For a limited time, you can purchase an Oreck upright Commercial RHB vacuum cleaners at the dealer cost of $209 including shipping! $45 of each vacuum sold goes directly to the Cleaning for a Reason foundation!
Extremely lightweight and easy to maintain, these are the ONLY upright vacuums the All Stars use in our client’s homes.
Call our office today to place your order! This special offer won’t last long!
We can be reached by phone at 970.215.2224
or by Email at laura@cleaningallstars.com
Cleaning for a Reason is a wonderful program that I am very proud to be a part of. All Star Cleaning Services was the first chapter of C4R in Colorado 2 1/2 years ago, and is still the only chapter serving the Northern Colorado area.
As of today:
Cleaning for a Reason has 415 maid service partners in 43 states plus Canada
1,918 women have been served
Over $275,000 in services have been donated by C4R partner maid services
Since partnering with cleaning for a reason in late 2006, All Star Cleaning Services has helped 25 women, including 6 active patients as of today.
Hear what one of our patients had to say about the program:
If you know someone who could use some help, locally or in another area, Cleaning for a Reason can be contacted through their website at:
www.cleaningforareason.org
Or Toll Free at (877) 337-3348.
For the month of June only:
Current clients get your carpets cleaned in June and we will donate 20% of the cost of the cleaning to the C4R foundation in your name.
To donate to the Cleaning for a Reason Foundation in memory of a friend or loved one, click here
I have just returned from a wonderful trip to Hilo, Hawaii. My younger sister lives there, and I flew out for a week to see her graduate from college with a degree in business. Having fallen in love with the island, she has decided to stay and open Aloha All Natural, and natural cleaning service servicing the big island of Hawaii. Having worked for me off and on for years, she knows the industry well and I am sure she will do great things. While there, I spent some time helping her with startup, since I have been there, done that and know the ropes.
The first thing I noticed upon arrival was the abundance of hand written signs tacked to phone poles: CLEANING LADY, $8 an hour call 555-5555. You could hardly pass a phone pole without at least 2-3 of these signs.
My sister scheduled an estimate for my final day that we had planned for me to do for her while she watched, so she could learn the sales process first hand. It was quite clear to me within the first few minutes that this woman clearly was looking for one of these $8 an hour housekeepers. My sister did not get the job.
The industry refers to these under-the-table workers as trunkslammers, and they frustrate me to no end. What do you get when you hire a trunkslammer? Cheap labor for sure. But what happens when this worker uses the wrong product and ruins all of your granite countertops? You will be the one footing the bill, as insurance would be far out of reach for such a low income worker.
What happens when that worker falls and breaks their ankle in your home? Contrary to popular belief, homeowners insurance will NOT cover such injuries. If the person was performing work in your home for money, that makes them your employee and workman’s comp insurance is the only thing that would cover them (I pay an average of $1000 a month for workman’s comp – not something individual homeowners are likely to consider for their cash employees.)
An $8-15 an hour cash worker is virtually guaranteed to not have health insurance of their own (although once again, even if they did they would not be covered) and they are not likely to have savings to cover their expenses during their recovery period while they are unable to work.
So what happens when your $8 an hour cleaner falls in your home and breaks their ankle? You get sued. It does not matter how nice your housekeeper is or how close you may have become, when faced with no income, no savings, and high medical bills, she will sue you and she will win. After all, you were her employer.